Persian Gulf Arab states don’t want democracy: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jalal Fairooz, a former Bahraini legislator, in London, about the relentless crackdown by the Bahraini regime on protestors in the country.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It seems the crackdown against dissent continues in Bahrain and unfortunately we’re not hearing much from the Western media or the Western leaders.

Fairooz: Well, that’s not unusual. The Western governments are backing the brutal regime in Bahrain. They are against the real democracy in the Middle East. They are not saying anything in regards of the non-existing of the democracy in Saudi Arabia and the [Persian] Gulf states, but they are standing alongside and backing of the dictatorship and the authoritarian tyrannies in the region.

In regards to the prosecution, it is actually as usual as other incidents in Bahrain. The regime claims that there has been some booby-traps against the police, and based on that, they do prosecute the opposition people. In this case, it is only a young person, who has been denied full access to a solicitor or a lawyer. And also his family have seen him once in six months and he couldn’t walk because of the severe torture he’s been faced with.

With all that into account, this is just another lie, but of course it is in the same manner of trying to send some strong messages to the opposition that, ‘Unless you stop protesting, you stop asking for democracy, then, we will hit you very hard.’

Press TV: How do you think this plays in favor to these Western governments, supporting dictatorships when we are supposed to believe that the Western governments’ names is kind of synonymous to democracy; why are they not standing up for the people of Bahrain?

Fairooz: Let me just give you an incident, which happened here in London. Two weeks ago, the supreme man in Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, was here, he was of course prime minister, but he’s still the strongman in Qatar.

He was in one of the institutes here in London with large audience there and he was talking about how Qatar wants to resist and restate democracy in Syria and Yemen. And I had to intervene... I had an intervention and I asked him first of all: “Why do you want democracy in Syria and Yemen and don’t want it for Qatar itself?”

And of course, there was some applaud in the audience and he was so embarrassed. He said: “No, we are trying to get... and whatever system we have it is accepted by our people.”

That was the nonsense. That’s the situation in the [Persian] Gulf now. They are saying that, ‘We want democracy in Yemen and Syria,’ but they don’t want democracy in Bahrain. They bring Saudi forces to Bahrain to crack down [on] pro-democracy movement.

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